A holiday? She couldn't really recall the last time that she'd really been able to celebrate anything. Not for the last several years anyways. Between her usual Soul Reaper duties, the nearly constant fighting breaking out, making new friends/enemies, the losses etc...she'd just not really had the time to.
Which was sad.
Because after a while she, her family, and not even her friends had celebrated them anymore. To them celebrating something as trivial as a holiday was a luxury that they just couldn't afford anymore. A distraction.
Mostly because their life expectancy had dropped considerably once they'd all gained their abilities. And with the way she, Rukia, Chad and a few others tended to get hurt all the time...well, they'd had no choice but to acknowledge their mortality earlier than some of the others.
It had probably been why her dad and sisters stopped celebrating the holidays too after a while. They'd been slowly easing into the inevitable. Her death.
She suddenly felt like crying. The crushing weight of...everything lodged like a stone in her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. It all just weighed so very heavily on her heart that she didn't know what to do anymore. But she knew that if she didn't push the horrible feeling welling up inside of her, she'd likely collapse onto the ground and never move again.
Putting a hand over her face- enough to cover her eyes anyways- she took a moment to try practicing one of the breathing techniques that the doctor at the hospital had taught her to stave off a panic attack.
Focus on something else. Find a happy place and use it to center yourself. She thought. Her inner hollow chimed in and tried to help. This time she didn't bother to show her visions of setting her guardian's face on fire. So despite how crappy she felt, she couldn't help but smile a little bit.
Especially when her inner hollow started griping about how damned girly she felt right then. But then her inner hollow had helped to calm her down by showing her a vision of her late mother's favorite flowers.
A whole colorful field of them.
And since neither she nor her inner hollow were totally sure that they even liked flowers, then she supposed that her inner hollow had an actual reason to complain for once.
Even she knew that Hollows and flowers didn't mix.
In fact she would bet anything that once she felt a bit calmer then her inner hollow was going to decide to 'frolic' through the flowery field for the sole reason of committing flowery genocide.
Still, it worked. It wasn't perfect, but it had helped.
She had to ignore the war cry from her inner hollow once she told her that she felt better. Turned out that she was right about the flower genocide. Those poor flowers didn't stand a chance. She thought to herself in bemusement as her lips twitched.
The last thing that she got from her inner hollow was a nice jump right into a thicket where she'd popped her head up out of the tall stems with a couple of wild flowers- roses- from the looks of it, were sticking out of her inner hollows mouth before promptly being spat out and a growl escaped her.
"Blah, thorns!"
Ichigo merely shook her head a little bit and pretended that she didn't have the sudden urge to laugh at her inner hollow's misfortune to wind up with roses/thorns in her mouth. But then that was what happened when one tried to commit flower genocide so eagerly, face first anyways.
Feeling a bit better now, she took a deep breath and started walking again.
It only took her a few more minutes to get back to the dorm. And once she got there she was greeted by the sight of her tall blond goofball guardian standing outside looking at his cell phone and looking both slightly alarmed and puzzled. His worried expression faded a bit once he finally saw her walking up. But then instantly came back once she was close enough for him to ask her.
"Uh, I-Ichigo? W-Why am I getting weird t-texts from a serial killer? And why is this creep boasting about getting a hug from you?!"
She looked confused for a second before understanding dawned on her and she smirked evilly at the man before asking him, "Why are you freaking out that I gave someone other than you a hug?"
He sputtered at her indignantly as she then said, "Oh, I get it. You're jealous."
"I am..." Was about as far as he managed to get before Izuku came tearing out of the dorm screaming as he ran past them in a panic,
"A serial killer just texted me! He somehow knows that I didn't do my homework yet!"
Toshinori just stared after the boy wide eyed while Ichigo let out a low whistle and muttered. "Damn, his information network is impressive." Which was followed by a soft questioning, "I wonder if he can give me pointers?"
While he took a moment to try and figure out what he should do first, apologize to Ichigo for earlier, address the serial killer texting him and young Midoriya issue, or if he should simply pack his things and get ready to leave the city for the holiday.
Finally coming to the decision that he and Ichigo really needed to talk. Besides he still needed to apologize to her for not taking her wishes into consideration about the Hero course anyways.
He reached out and grabbed the girl- who didn't even yelp or squirm in his grasp- and quickly tucked her under his arm like a football and turned to leave.
Midoriya was a big boy now. He had his own quirk now and everything. So it wasn't as if he were really abandoning him or anything. He was just...trying to focus on one kid at a time at the moment and Ichigo simply took precedence over him at the moment.
But just to be on the safe side, he'd send Shota and a couple other people to make sure that the serial killer texting him wasn't going to be an actual issue.
It'd really, really suck to leave for the holiday and come back to find the boy had been killed. And frankly he wasn't all that thrilled to possibly explain to the boy's mother how that had even happened in the first place.
Inko Midoriya might be a very small woman in stature but she was damned scary when crossed.
However if Shota and the others decided that it wasn't an issue, then he'd trust them enough to only blackmail one student to act as the boy's sort-of-bodyguard while he was away. He was thinking maybe Ka-chan since the boy was closer to young Midoriya now than he'd probably ever been.
Plus if someone had to kill Izuku, it would likely be the temperamental blond boy anyways. At least that would be easier to explain to people.